Existential

As I grew older, I lost the secret of how to get the girls to take all their clothes off just for me. To get them to reveal a deeper kind of nudity than just the holiness of bared skin, freed from the tyranny and coercion of clothing. I loved the smell of those naked girls, not sugar and spice, but soap and something as clean as grass under the warmth of summer sun.

I didn't keep score or anything puerile like that. I didn't play that kind of game. It was not a matter of numbers. It was not to be used for boasting and strutting either. I never told anyone else, certainly never told those few other men and boys I could talk to.

This was just between the girls and me. It was a private, personal, sort of thing that should remain our secret, even from their own boyfriends. For the boyfriends would not understand that there was something special beyond mere macho sexual boasting, a completely new world hidden and unknown to them, unreachable by mere ordinary male understanding.

The boys would have to let go, learn to set themselves free from the chains that held them rooted to the rocks of the male understanding, the male psyche. It was hard, too hard for them to give up on what had been so painfully, so recently learnt. They were all standing on the edge of adulthood, learning the rules that separated the men from the boys: how to walk; how to talk; how to touch and how to fear. Without an understanding of these rules they would never be able to walk the corridors, the streets of manhood, never find the key that unlocked the code that would reveal how to be one of the lads.

But, while they were all doing that, I was off with the girls, learning something else. A different way to talk, to walk, places to touch, where to kiss and a wordless language of tongues. I was an initiate into an old religion, perhaps the oldest religion. This was something quite holy, and religion only truly matters when it is private and personal. It was only between the girls and me.

I knew the boys would never understand. I knew they would never see that I wasn't taking anything they believed belonged to them. I was there to receive a gift, a benediction, freely bestowed by someone else, some other really free person who could belong only to herself and all promises of fealty were declarations of slavery that contradicted all decencies. It was an authentically free act, and through it, we became free people who could almost understand and make sense of our young world.

Expecting The Worst

Anyway, it was that time again. We all knew what in meant. We were all expecting the worst. So, when it failed to be as bad as everyone expected there was some disappointment. It does seem odd that people can be disappointed - looking back - by the lack of suffering, death and destruction, but we were.

When I awoke in the morning, surprised to be still alive, it seemed strange to go about my normal routine. It seemed much the same as any other day. Even when I turned the radio news on, they were still talking about the same old trivial political non-story they'd been boring everyone senseless with for well over a week.

It took around twenty minutes for them to get around to discussing the events of the previous night. You could sense too, that they too were disappointed. Perhaps that was why they were so reluctant to get around to the story - or rather, the non-story, as it turned out. It seemed they too wanted the misery, the fatalities, the heroic acts, the drama, the event.

I suppose something like that is the journalistic equivalent of the cup final. Something they dream about being involved in. I suppose they feel lucky to get even one such event in a career. The disappointment of last night must have felt like losing in the last minute of the semi-final.

Fashion

'Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.' - Oscar Wilde.

Back in the days of punk (1976-1977), we used to sneer at those old (40+) rockers who used to bore everyone about the good-old great days of Elvis, Jerry Lee, Little Richard. We listened (eventually) - and most of it - of course - was crap.

Looking back now, from my own 40+ years I can't say that our music was any better - despite what we so naively thought at the time. Nor can I say that punk itself was anything other than an utter waste of time, except for one thing.

When looked without the distortions for nostalgia for youth, it is easy to see how crap punk really was. The music of course was terrible - as I've already said - even by the woeful standards of most rock music. The stupid clothes - bin liners and bondage trousers, and the terribly stupid haircuts and dyed hair. The pointless petulant attitude - I'm so bored (it is actually true that only the boring get bored) and the sneering, self-righteous and self-regarding smugness.

In fact, the whole pose of punk with its faux-nihilism is so hysterically funny - and phoney - when you look back at it from the advantage of maturity.

However, it was not all a total waste of all the bright possibilities of youth. There was one thing, but only thing, that us ex-punks could be proud of. There was one thing that made the whole sorry episode worthwhile - and slightly more than an embarrassing footnote in the short stupid history of teen culture (what an oxymoron). This was that we - once and for all (or so we so naively thought, but hey, we were young) got rid of flared trousers.

Flared trousers were just two great swathes of superfluous material flapping around your ankles as if you were two inverted perambulating flagpoles. Was there anything more pointless in the entire history of fashion (including periwigs and bustles)?

And yet….

And yet….

The bloody things came back into fashion! Santayana must be spinning in his grave.

However, that is the nature of fashion - its essence. Change is fashion's only constant. Nothing matters except change. It doesn't matter that it makes no sense to wear - for example, trousers that cover only to just below the knees in mid-winter. If that is what fashion decrees, then that must be what is done.

The same, of course, goes for anti-fashion - sub-sub cultures like Goths et al - as for fashion itself. If fashion followers are mere sheep, then Goths are just black sheep.

Valentine's Day

Back in the days of myth and legend it all used to be so much easier. However, in these days of political correctness and ‘Health ‘n’ Safety’ you can no longer go out and slay a dragon for her, especially now dragons are a protected species.

In recent times, Valentine's Day has become just another commercial rip-off, built up to only separate people from their money in the name of ‘romance’. It is all nonsense, hyped-up by all the various commercial interests. I do not play these sorts of games and I am disappointed by those who do.

It has now become a simple equation. The amount spent on a valentine is directly proportional to how much you love her. Spending a few hundred quid for a luxury romantic meal, a night in a pink heart-shaped bed, and a matching heart-shaped box of chocolates, shows her what a potent lover you could be.

In contemporary society, though, the amount of money you spend on anything shows how important that thing is to you. Even those things that are supposed to transcend commercial considerations - like love - are made into functions in the commercial equation.

We are only allowed to be consumers; every relationship must boil down to a commercial transaction. If there is no money in it, then it is worthless. Monetary value becomes literal value. If it doesn't cost, then it is not worth keeping.

Singing For Your Supper

Here is a comment I made on The Grauniad’s Cif site about the recording industry becoming redundant.

My comment:

Technology changes and new industries come into being – like the record industry in the 20^th century. Then technology changes and industries fade away and some die. The record companies existed to get a physical thing – the record, cassette, 8-track, CD DVD - out into the mass market. That is no longer necessary as the physical object nowadays - the CD or DVD - is no longer needed to transport its contents from producer to customer. Therefore, the record companies are no longer necessary – despite what they claim. The only real possible claim they can have against ‘pirates’ anyway, is against those that make and *sell* the actual physical object – only then are they actually losing a genuine sale as a downloaded ‘illegal’ copy is only a tenuously theoretical possible loss, if that.

The question now is what the makers of the tunes want to do with their stuff, nobody really wants to pay for stuff off the web and once the tune exists in digital form, extra copies of it are virtually costless.

So, that’s it really. If people want to buy a physical object professionally produced with a cover, case and so forth the band (or whoever) should sell it to them. These sort of threads always seem to have loads of people who want that. Otherwise, the raw tracks should be free, out there for people to do with what they will. They could look upon the recorded stuff as adverts, publicity, PR – what you will. The bands will eventually not even have to pay the server cost of hosting the files as they roam free.

Quite simply, the cost of making recoded music is now negligible – as compared to days of yore – and the costs of getting it out into the world are now virtually non-existent. So the only question remains as to whether the artists should be paid for making the recording, but if they look at it as a form of PR, advertising and so forth for their live gigs or whatever, then they will get some return on their time spent making it.

It may mean the days of limos, mansions and groupies are over, but there may be enough for a reasonable living, after all nobody is forcing them to do what they do, are they? So ANY reward at all is a bonus, after all we are often told that the world doesn’t owe anyone a living.

Balcony

She looks out from her balcony and sees the sun-bleached buildings - mostly white - climbing back up the hillside, crowded together seemingly without reason or order. She thinks about the buildings back home, dark, drab, damp with rain and cold. She sighs.

She had always thought of herself as a summer person, bursting into bloom whenever the sun warmed her skin. Now, to her surprise, she found herself nostalgic for the shiver when she crawled reluctantly out of bed on a dark, cold, wet and windy February morning. A time when it seemed as though summer, or even ordinary sunshine, would never be seen again. She could now understand those ancient pagan rituals that begged for the return of spring at such times, and why the early Christians had been so eager to appropriate them.

The Stars

I remember it all so well, the dark clear nights and so, so many stars. There they were, all up there and waiting, waiting patiently for us. We were on our way, too. There were men actually walking on the moon as I stood there, looking up at it. So, I, we, thought, it would not take long, not very long at all. Soon mankind would reach the planets and then, then it would be on to the stars.

But, we, mankind, stopped, turned back, lost interest. When the planets, the stars, were there - waiting for us - we turned our backs on them. Instead, we turned on more lights at night, so that the stars could no longer compete. We no longer looked up, but looked across at our neighbours and the things they were buying. We no longer reached for the stars; we only reached for what was on display in the shops.

We gave up on dreaming, of looking for something higher, something greater. It al became unreal. We lost that belief, that optimism, that desire. It all became petty, shallow and meaningless.

I do not go out much at night now. I suppose the stars are still there, but I do not look up that often. The disappointment is hard to bear. I stay inside and watch television instead.